Experiencing Jesus by Gerald O’Collins, SJ; Chapter 1 – “What’s it all about?”

Ash Wednesday marks the start of the holy season of Lent; a journey of 40 days (not counting Sundays) that ends with the glorious, powerful and life-saving resurrection of Christ. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, it’s still just the morning after Ash Wednesday and the brilliance of Easter Morning seems very far away. Gerald O’Collins begins his Lenten reflection book with a chapter titled “What’s it all about?” The “it” O’Collins refers to is the subject, and the exploration, of the chapter rather than a mysterious and confusing pronoun (I always tell my kids, “use a proper noun before using a pronoun!”); and the “it” is not simply Ash Wednesday, but all that Ash Wednesday hopes to point toward as we begin our journey of Lent. And the journey begins with a funny smear of ashes on your forehead, should you so choose. O’Collins’ first chapter makes a clear point, however; should you not choose to have the ashes smeared across your forehead, the meaning remains and envelops your journey as well. What is that meaning?

The complicated answer is that there are so many meanings it would take a lifetime to approach the truth of it, but that seems like a cop-out. So, let’s take up the matter of the ashes again and focus our attention there. O’Collins makes a blunt point of it: “Ash on our foreheads shows what we are: people of dust and destined to die.” (p. 12) He continues to make several points of mortal life, points we know all too well – life if fragile, life is transient, life happens in the midst of the mighty cosmos, but life is sacred and God given; and this last bit about life trumps all the others. We head into Lent knowing that life is not always a box of chocolates (yes, Forest Gump’s mother said that) but we have been given our lives through the grace and love of God, which means that our life, our fragile mortal life, has a depth that transcends the fragility that appears on the surface of it. Lent’s journey is about exploring the depth of life so that we might appreciate, maybe even understand a bit of the abundant love that we have been given from the One who gives everything through love.